Melancholy Memories
by ScarlettsFuneral
Summary: I own nothing. Your best friend is gone; dead by your hand. And it's now sinking in, plunging you deeper into miasma of depression. Is there hope that was hidden from you? Or is your best friend gone forever? And what is the cost?


If you are looking for a happy story filled with joyful characters with a sweet, charming turn of events making up the plot, I advise you that it is probably in your best interest to turn away from this story now. That is not the kind of narrative I'm writing, and not the type that you should be expecting. So if that's what you were looking for, please leave, or read this in silence, because I don't want to hear your complaints about it not being the sugar-coated, cheerful story of a talking puppy and a magical rainbow that grants wishes and gumdrops. This is a story about Light Yagami, L Lawliet, Misa Amane, and others, none of them the most cheerful beings you will ever read about. You have been warned, and if you survived that commencing caveat, please enjoy the story, seeing it for what it is. Thank you.

He sits in subdued silence, a shattered picture of happiness. Nothing is 'happy' anymore. He can only recall the dictionary definition, no emotion at all placed in it. A thick fog of memories that he wishes to keep, yet at the same time, forget cloud his mind, day after day. He struggles, lost in them, as they consume him, and he's left living in his mind, while his physical body is replaying each day as the last, over and over and he walks in his miasma. People talk to him, but it doesn't register in his memory. He feels nothing that is remotely similar to what is known as "hope" or "love" or "joy". He doesn't remember what those feelings are anymore, but he knows that he did once upon a time. And those are the pictures he clings to, each still-frame of each movie playing in his mind on repeat, in a desperate attempt to live the life he threw away. And when each one cuts him and makes him bleed, he feels it, and yet he doesn't. Like a chilling numbness that stings and hurts, but that is so numb that you can't feel it. The numbness is what's hurting him. He fools himself, lies to his subconscious, with the excuse that he didn't mean to drag up old memories, but it's getting too old to believe, when he knows it's because he wants to be living everything he reminisces about, just once more. He misses L, but L's not coming back.

Beautiful. The contrast, the features, the intelligence, all simply beautiful, like a priceless painting that no one would dare to touch. Yet he crushed it, twisted it up, tore it and killed it, and now he feels its pain. He never thought that he'd be so depressed over this. But he is, because now he's alone. He intentionally killed the one person who made him genuinely happy. Every time he thinks about it, it slices his heart the same way the memories he has left do, and he sits in his head and continues to bleed more and more, faster and faster, wishing the pain to both disappear and stay. Because even though it hurts him, the pain reminds him that he is still alive.

"Light," Soichiro attempts to communicate with his son in vain. He earns nothing but a brief, half-listening, "Hm." So he tries again, "Light?" and it yields the same result. Light is just nodding, keeping to himself. He's wrapped up in his thoughts, remembering what he wants so badly to forget, but is desperate not to lose. He ignores everyone around him, content to write names down, taking more lives in a stupor and live in his past forever.

He wakes up in a cold sweat that night, shaking, panting, bolted upright, rebuffing against his night terror, which he's all too used to. And he doesn't realize it, but he's half waiting to feel arms wrapped around him, and a warm breath accompanied by comforting voice that placates him. But that's not going to happen. Light Yagami or Kira, it doesn't matter who he was at the time, he killed him. And he could kill himself for the brutal mistake.

He lapses back into his dreamscape, his subconscious letting him wander, yet on a leash, because it's still reminding him of what he's missing so urgently. He'll never be able to forget. Ashen skies filled with tones of black shroud his mind; he's finally dead, and where he agreed to be sentenced to from the beginning. Frantically he searches, to no avail, for some lingering moment of the past. _Their_ past. _He has to be here_, he thinks. The realistic, logical part of his mind - the one he does his best to repress anymore- knowing that if the other doesn't want to be found, he won't be. The pessimism wraps around his mind constricting tighter and tighter until, "Light." He whips his head around to find the source of that bittersweet, familiar voice that both warms his heart and stabs it with shards of guilt at the same time when he hears it. He runs to it, coming closer and closer….

Light wakes up for the second time, except this time its morning, and now his mood is melancholy. He lies in his bed, his covers bunched around his feet and waist, as he's bathed in the golden, gleaming morning sunrays pouring through his window. And he can't help but notice that for as beautiful the sight of the luminosity of daylight was, he has no one to share it with. Just like being all dressed up but with nowhere to go. It was depressing, honestly. He's pulled out of his musings as he notices as Ryuk floats through the dark navy-blue-painted wall on the far side of the room. _'_His_ favorite color…'_ Light reflects sadly. He can't think of much that doesn't work its way back to being connected with the raven haired detective of his past that seems to keep haunting his memory, though. The one he killed.

He has to admit that Kira feels superior though… he has nothing to worry about on the note of getting caught. He attempts to convince himself that it's better. He never needed L! He's happy L is dead, and so it should be easier to forget all about him. Release all of the memories that haunt him. L wasn't his life, or even a part of it. He doesn't miss his enemy. Light's shoving every negative emotion he can think of onto his plate, trying to find some common ground between his actions, and his beliefs. He can't believe that L's gone, and he finds that he's still waiting for L to return to him. He's denying that he killed his best friend. But he doesn't care about the other, or wish for his presence. Even if it is so boring that he's beginning to kill people just so that he has something to do, not to help the world. He's losing sight of his motives on the horizon. Kira doesn't need L, and he's glad he's gone. But Kira's fading away… leaving Light with the burning guilt of Kira's actions.


End file.
